CHILDRENS RECALL OF THE NEWS - TV-NEWS STORIES COMPARED WITH 3 PRINT VERSIONS

A partial replication study was conducted comparing children's recall of news stories presented via television and via print. Unlike the pro cedure in previous experiments, television news stories were compared not only with literal transcripts of the television narratives, but al so with two different ''real'' newspaper versions written by journalis ts. In addition, the study investigated whether the relative effective ness of television and print in conveying news information was depende nt on children's reading proficiency. A sample of 144 fourth and sixth graders was presented with a sequence of five children's news stories , either in their original television form or in one of the three prin t versions. The results of a cued-recall test indicated that children who watched the news on television remembered the stories better than children who read one of the three print versions, regardless of their level of reading proficiency.